git-cvsimport broken?

I have started consistently getting the following error trying to do a git-cvsimport into an empty directory:

+ git cvsimport -C /home/hpa/local/kernel-cvs-import -k -u -m -A 
/home/hpa/local/authors -d /home/hpa/local/cvsroot 
project/sw/kernel/linux-2.6
cp: cannot stat `/export/hpa/kernel-cvs-import/.git/refs/heads/origin': 
No such file or directory
fatal: master: not a valid SHA1
fatal: 'HEAD': No such file or directory
usage: git-read-tree (<sha> | -m [-u | -i] <sha1> [<sha2> [<sha3>]])
checkout failed: 256

After failing, the directory in question contains the output of git-init-db, including a HEAD file which contains a symbolic reference to a nonexistent branch (which makes sense, since there has been no checkins yet.)

Have other people seen this problem?

	-hpa