Attempting to elminate authentication failure messages

Hi everyone,
I'm using fds for authentication; /etc/nsswitch.conf is configured to
first query the ldap server and then local files for user information;
I'm not sure why, however for some reason whenever a user attempts to
authenticate to the box with a password, the box always reports in
/var/log/messages an authentication failure, followed by a success (the
success of course if only the user did in fact type their password
correctly; in the excerpt below, I did not mistype my password; I would
have expected that by configuring /etc/nsswitch.conf to first query the
ldap server and then local files would have eliminated the misleading
authentication messages...any ideas?  Thanks very much 

Jun 21 11:16:27 ms-lnx-s53 sshd(pam_unix)[16642]: check pass; user
unknown
Jun 21 11:16:27 ms-lnx-s53 sshd(pam_unix)[16642]: authentication
failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=NODEVssh ruser=
rhost=abliss.preferredcare.org
Jun 21 11:16:27 ms-lnx-s53 sshd(pam_unix)[16644]: session opened for
user awb by (uid=0)

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