In 1973 Whiteley and Woodrow Wyatt presented the Anglia Television documentary "The Red Under the Bed", about the trial of the Shrewsbury Two (Des Warren and Ricky Tomlinson), which was broadcast on the day that the trial jury retired to consider their verdict. The programme, which was heavily critical of the trade union movement, is now considered to have swayed jurors into returning a guilty verdict and was later cited by the Criminal Cases Review Commission as evidence that the verdicts were unsound. Warren and Tomlinson's convictions were overturned in 2021. Speaking in 2017 about the documentary, Tomlinson claimed to be in possession of confidential documents proving that it had been funded and written by British intelligence services and that Whiteley had been employed by MI5 at the time of broadcast.