ntp permission error

[Scott Henderson]

I'm setting up ntpd on a server, so it can pull time from the
Internet, but it is failing to synchronize with other servers.
The log shows repeated: 

<date/time/servername> ntpd_initres[19465]: server returns a
permission denied error

This seems to happen regardless of the source server pointed to. 
After building this server a couple of weeks ago, I ran through a
security checklist from www.cisecurity.org.  I'm suspicious I've
blocked the user account ntp out from running ntpd properly. I'm
wondering if the problem might be that the daemon account that
runs ntpd (named "ntp") doesn't have permission to some file or
folder on the box?

-from /etc/passwd:

ntp:x:38:38::/etc/ntp:/sbin/nologin

Can anyone help?

Thanks, Scott