I am working with Tomcat 5.5.x with Struts 1.2 to run a rather large website (large w.r.t. source code). I'm looking to add OpenID to my website, mostly to access attribute exchange to help accelerate the registration process. Every Java implementation for OpenID I have attempted to use will cause a ServletException. Tracing this has been very difficult, but it seems merely instancing any class that makes use of Apache HttpClient will cause the crash. Is this a configuration problem I can address in the JVM, or is it positively wrong to try to initiate an outbound Http request from within an inbound Http request?