996 Mid-Term Board Meeting Miami, March, 2004

MIAMI MID-TERM BOARD MEETING-APPROVAL NEW MEMBERS

Several new applicants were approved for membership in W.I.N. (subject to publication) at the recent Mid-Term Board meeting in Miami. One of the new probationary members, Clarissa “Cici” McNair attended the meeting. She is based in Miami and has a fascinating background some details of which are outlined below. Those present at the meeting thoroughly enjoyed meeting her.

 She was born in Jackson, Mississippi, Clarissa McNair attended St. Andrew’s Episcopal Day School for five years before attending Boyd Elementary and Bailey Junior High. Graduating from Murrah High School, she furthered her education at Briarcliff College in New York. There she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in American history.

 Working for an award winning CBC television documentary in Canada on organized crime, McNair was a researcher as well as a writer for the television documentary, Connections. Clarissa McNair has also experienced news anchoring in Rome where she worked the weekend evening news for WROM-TV (McNair's Biography Publicity Release). Afterwards, she became a news broadcaster on Vatican Radio while also writing and producing documentaries focusing on the subject of the Third World such as, "The Homelands Policy of South Africa," "The Eritrea War for Independence," and "Benigno Aquino and the Philippine Opposition." Comparing the Soviet Union and the United States involvement and policy, military strategy and public sentiment in Vietnam, McNair created a three-part series entitled, "Is Afghanistan the Soviet Union's Viet Nam?". Including a number of programs on South Africa, she also produced a program called, "Reagan's Haitian Immigration Policy" . The subjects she used in her on-air interviews ranged from journalists to heads of state. With a book on contemporary celibacy in the Catholic Church, called Desire and Denial, she served as the co-author of the many translated versions of the book.

Garden of Tigers, McNair's first novel, was published in 1988 by Century Hutchinson, Ltd., in Great Britain, but she wrote the book while living in Italy. In addition, the British paperback was published by Futura (McNair's Biography Publicity Release). While writing Garden of Tigers, Clarissa McNair was head of international publicity for a film company established in Rome and Los Angeles. Red Roses, White Lies is an altered version of Garden of Tigers, which the New American Library (NAL) was published in New York. Her second novel, A Flash of Diamonds, was written in Geneva, Switzerland, and was published in 1991 by St. Martin’s Press. The paperback became available in 1992. In 1993, Martinez Roca published a version of the novel which was translated into Spanish. Involved with script development, she worked with Kings Road Productions while living in Los Angeles. Written as a birthday present to her mother, a novella entitled The Hole in the Edge was privately published in 1997. Her third novel, Dancing With Thieves was released in 2001. The novel is "fast-paced caper" that introduces greedy, risk-taking characters in the money laundering business. In Clarissa McNair’s words the characters “are all dancing with thieves.

Along with a variety of jobs, Clarissa McNair has traveled broadly and lived in countries such as Canada, Italy, England, Cyprus, Switzerland, Portugal, and America. Currently, she is a private detective living in Miami. During her years as a detective, she has worked on many cases including missing persons, sexual harassment, and insurance fraud, and these cases have taken her from Hong Kong to Connecticut. Law enforcement agencies that she has worked with include the F.B.I., the Federal Marshals, the NYPD’s Anti-Terrorist Task Force and its Organized Crime Intelligence Division. From July 1998 to June 2000, she served on the defense team of Sante and Kenneth Kimes, who were accused of the murder of a Manhattan millionaire, as one of two investigators in a homicide case. The case received international attention. Currently, Clarissa McNair is busy with a money-laundering/fraud case that takes her to Europe, the Caribbean, and Central America. She is an independent agent who is hired by the hour, day, or case . Currently, Clarissa McNair is working on another book based on one of her cases including a murderer which serves as the main character. In addition, she is also involved in writing a book on case studies in which each case is a short story or chapter.

(WIN)