CentOS 5 :: Ssh Login Drops Letter E From Input At The Prompt?

A strange problem has surfaced with my CentOS 5.5 Rackspace Cloud Server. I was doing OK until today. For some strange reason, whenever I login to the server, using ssh and pub/priv key authorization, or password authorization for that matter, the letter E (that's an uppercase 'e') does not echo at the prompt line, it just beeps like an error. At the login prompt, before signing in, the letter E is echoed to the terminal window. I'm using an iMac, OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and the standard Mac terminal application.

This behavior does not occur when using the terminal app locally, i.e., logged into the iMac, and all other applications on the Mac are OK with 'E's. To further test the issue, I used the Java console app that Rackspace provides through a browser (I use Firefox, latest revision). Before logging in, the login prompt will accept and echo 'E'. As soon as I authenticate and get to a system prompt, anytime I press a Shift-e, I get a beep and no echo to the terminal command line. It doesn't matter who I login as, root or another user.

To further confuse things, if I start up an instance of nano in that very same terminal window, nano accepts and echoes the 'E'! Using nano, I've created a short bash script file:

#!/bin/bash
echo "ABCDEFG"

and it echoes properly when run.

Any clues as to where I might look to resolve this bizarre behavior?

My getinfo.sh system specs are here here.