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Snowden’s Choices | 281
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, anony-
mously sent the documents to journalists as “Citizen Four.” In fact,
in late May 2013, that was exactly what he did. He anonymously
sent Gellman the PRISM scoop, which the Post published on June 6.
He also sent Greenwald and Poitras documents while he was still
the anonymous Citizen Four. 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 3, the 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 having any suspicion fall on his co-workers at
the NSA. Yet in the initial stories published by Greenwald, Poitras,
and Gellman, Snowden had not allowed the reporters to identify him
© by either name or position. If he did not act to deflect suspicion from ©
his co-workers for the initial investigation, why do it a week later?
In the intervening week, the FBI had already launched its criminal
investigation. In any case, he did not need to be the subject of a docu-
mentary film to take sole responsibility for stealing state secrets. He
could have simply allowed Greenwald to identify him by name as
the source in the stories.
One thing that Snowden could not accomplish by anonymously
transferring the documents to journalists was a starring role in the
drama. If he had appeared digitally masked in Poitras’s video with
an altered voice, he would not achieve fame. To do that, he needed to
allow Poitras to film him committing the crime of turning over NSA
documents to Greenwald. This video was also part of his advance
planning. Indeed, one reason he chose Poitras was that she was a
prizewinning documentary filmmaker. Snowden, while he was still
working at the NSA in March 2013, made it clear how he intended
to use Poitras’s filmmaking skills. He told her, “My personal desire is
that you paint the target directly on my back.” Making himself the
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