Post WebRequest in SSIS failing

SSIS on SQL Server 2016 instance
Web Request Task is being used to upload data to a website.  Current coding works with existing address and key.
The new address and key is failing with a code of 4, indicating lost connection when GetRequestStream. I wrote a standalone VB.NET app with exact code and ran it without errors.  I placed the code below, without the actual address and key of course.  The failure occurs at this section of the code….

 Dim NewStream As Stream = REQUEST.GetRequestStream()
 NewStream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length)
 NewStream.Close()

Private Function SEND_DATA_JSON(ByVal JSON_DATA$, ByVal ADDR$, ByVal KEY$) As String
        Try
            Dim baseAddress As String = ADDR

            Dim REQUEST As HttpWebRequest = CType(WebRequest.Create(New Uri(baseAddress)), HttpWebRequest)

            With REQUEST
                .Headers.Add("Authorization", KEY)
                .Accept = "application/json"
                .ContentType = "application/json"
                .Method = "POST"
                .ContentLength = JSON_DATA.Length
                .Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials
                .KeepAlive = False
                .Timeout = -1
            End With

            Dim parsedContent As String = JSON_DATA
            Dim encoding As UTF8Encoding = New UTF8Encoding()
            Dim bytes() As Byte = encoding.GetBytes(parsedContent)

            Dim NewStream As Stream = REQUEST.GetRequestStream()
            NewStream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length)
            NewStream.Close()

            'Dim response As HttpWebResponse = CType(http.GetResponse(), HttpWebResponse)
            Dim response As WebResponse = REQUEST.GetResponse()

            Dim stream As Stream = response.GetResponseStream()
            Dim sr As StreamReader = New StreamReader(stream)
            Dim content As String = sr.ReadToEnd()

            response.Close()
            '----------------------------------------------------------------
            Return response.ToString
        Catch EX As WebException
            MsgBox(CInt(EX.Status) & " | " & EX.Message)

        End Try

        Return False

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