214 The third choice Snowden made, and the choice that most effectively defined him to the public, was to reveal himself as the man behind the leak in a video in Hong Kong. He not only identified himself as the person who stole the government documents published by the Guardian and Washington Post, but he incriminated himself further on camera by allowing Poitras to film him actually disclosing NSA’s secret operations to Greenwald. By disclosing classified data to Greenwald, an unauthorized person, he intentionally burned his bridges. What makes this choice intriguing is that there was no evident need for him to expose himself in this way. If he merely wanted to be a whistle-blower, he could have, as Bradley Manning did, anonymously sent the documents to journalists as “Citizen 4.” In fact, in late May 2013, that was exactly what he did. He sent Barton Gellman the PRISM scoop anonymously which the Washington Post published on June 6", 2013. In that scoop, Snowden’s name was not revealed. He also sent Greenwald and Poitras documents while he was still the anonymous source “Citizen 4.” Neither Gellman nor Greenwald had suggested the need for a face-to-face meeting with Snowden. Even after he had revealed his true identity to Poitras and Greenwald on June 2™ 2013, Guardian editor Ewen MacAskill offered him the option of remaining an unnamed source for the stories. He said, as he later told Vanity Fair. “You should remain anonymous; the stories are just as good without you.” However, anonymity was not part of Snowden’s long game. The reason he gave Greenwald in Hong Kong for going public in this way was to avoid any suspicion falling on his co-workers at the NSA. Yet, if merely wanted to take sole responsibility for stealing state secrets, he did not need to be the subject of a documentary. He could have simply allowed Greenwald to identify him by name as the source in the stories. That would not present an issue since he had not been identified by either name or pos