[mew-int 2699] Mew can't decrypt .mew-passwd.gpg

Hello,

Mew can't decode .mew-passwd.gpg.  No debug output regarding pgp/gpg
operations, when (setq mew-debug t) either. :(

Mew 6.2.51,
GNU Emacs 22.3.1 (i386-apple-darwin9.6.0, Carbon Version 1.6.0) of
2009-01-03 on seijiz.local
gpg (GnuPG) 2.0.10

Relevant .mew.el settings:

(setq mew-use-cached-passwd t)
(setq mew-use-master-passwd t)

(setq mew-pgp-ver 3)
(setq mew-prog-gpg "gpg")

(setf mew-use-cached-passwd t
      mew-passwd-timer-unit 60
      mew-passwd-lifetime 24)

I've deleted and recreated (via mew) the .mew-passwd.gpg to no effect. 
Putting a 'shim' around gpg to see how its running shows that Mew is
invoking GPG correctly, and using that exact command does indeed decrypt
the .mew-passwd.gpg file, so it seems that Mew isn't properly parsing
the return from gpg??

thanks for any help,

--Chan