As a weekly newsletter dedicated to digging up "facts to combat Communism," Counterattack was started in 1947 by three ex-FBI men. Of the three, Ted C. Kirkpatrick, the newsletter's impressive spokesman, quickly became known as "Mr. Counterattack." Though Counterattack's circulation, at $24 a year, never grew beyond 7,500, Kirkpatrick's name and the newsletter's influence stretched far beyond the small circle of readers. When Counterattack published Red Channels, a report on Communist influence on radio and TV (TIME, Sept. n, 1950), Kirkpatrick often spoke defending it from the charge that it was smearing innocent people. His argument: Red Channels "did not advocate...
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