Problem starting nnimap unplugged

[dsg@world.std.com (David S. Goldberg)]

I use an nnimap server as a secondary select method.  For a trip last
week, I decided to finally give the agent a try now that I've
discovered cygwin and XEmacs running under it.  I copied over my
startup files to my cygwin home directory, modified my .gnus to call
gnus-agentize per the info, ran xemacs and gnus, and set up two
categories.  I changed the default predicate to false and in the fetch
category, predicate is set to true.  I added six groups to the fetch
category and ran J s to fetch the articles in those groups.  I
verified by looking at the agent directory structure and went home
happy.  I'm fairly certain that that's all I needed to do according to
the info.  On the plane I tried to run M-x gnus-unplugged.  Gnus
appeared to hang interminably long.  Eventually I gave up with a C-g.
My guess is that nnimap is trying to do authentication even in
unplugged mode.  When I got to the hotel and dialed up my company's
modem pool, I was able to run gnus-unplugged with no hanging but
nnimap did authenticate me to the server.  I tried this repeatedly;
running gnus-unplugged while connected and not.  When not connected it
hangs.  Is there a workaround?

Thanks,
-- 
Dave Goldberg
dsg@world.std.com