Counterattack was a weekly subscription-based newsletter published from 1947 to 1955, with an emphasis on anti-communist content and organizing boycotts or other actions against those who were accused of communist associations or sympathies.

The mimeographed newsletter was published by American Business Consultants, a "private, independent organization" started by three former agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

[14] Its target subscribers included "Security Officers, Personnel Directors, Employment managers, and all sorts of people whose business requires them to know the facts about the background of organizations and/or individuals.

First, it set out to expose everyone it could find who had any connection, however dubious or tenuous, to anything or anyone associated with Communism, Socialism, the Soviet Union, or progressive ideology.

In its assault on performers and production personnel in radio and television, Counterattack exhorted its readers to write protest letters to the corporate sponsors of programs featuring actors with purported links to the left.

"[12][19] Affiliates of ABC included Lawrence Johnson (owners of a supermarket chain in upstate New York)[7] and Jack Wren (former Naval Intelligence officer at BBDO advertising agency).

Newsletter subscribers (clients) included: Bendix Aviation, Du Pont, General Motors, Metropolitan Life, R.J. Reynolds, and F.W.

Together with Keenan, they formed first "John Quincy Adams Associates" in Washington, DC, and then "American Business Consultants, Inc.", in New York City, publisher of Counterattack newsletter.

On March 26, 1947, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to air his views on communism.

Now that their aims and objectives are being exposed they are creating a Committee for the Constitutional Rights of Communists, and are feverishly working to build up what they term a quarter-million-dollar defense fund to place in ads in papers, to publish pamphlets, to buy radio time.

[30] American Business Consultants were part of a larger network,thath included HUAC, which researched allegedly communist-related activities of individuals and organizations.

Starting in August 1950, Young & Rubicam advertising agency and its radio and television program-sponsoring client General Foods ran into "pinko" issues over The Aldrich Family and The Goldbergs.

[11] In September 1950, Billboard magazine published an exposé "The Inside on 'Counterattack'", which promised the "full story of paper and operators", an "ex-FBI foursome".

By late June 1952, Time magazine reported that Kirkpatrick, AKA "Mr. Counterattack", had left the newsletter for "primarily personal reasons".

[33] The first publication whose accusation against Counterattack for "extortion-style" tactics stuck was a weekly newsletter called In Fact in an article dated July 17, 1950.