Jason Mattera, a conservative activist known for ambushing liberalcelebrities and politicians — by pretending to be a fan in search of a picture, and then firing off confrontational questions at close range — was forced to retract a video interview with Bono he unveiled with some fanfare this week, when it emerged that the man he mistook for the lead singer of U2 recently was, in fact, a Bono impersonator.

Mr. Mattera’s interview, in which he chastised a Bono lookalike named Pavel Sfera for U2’s attempt to avoid paying taxes in Ireland, has been removed from Breitbart.com, where it was originally published, and no longer appears on the activist’s YouTube channel, but copies remain online. As the Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple explains, the video reveals that Mr. Sfera did not speak in an Irish accent and seemed to drop some clues that he was not the singer.

In a part of the interview that can still be seen, Mr. Sfera, whose Web siteBonoDouble.com notes that even the singer’s wife agrees that he bears a striking resemblance to Bono, can be heard repeatedly denying that he has any control over the band’s tax arrangements.

Mr. Mattera: Hey, by dodging taxes on royalties, are you raiding the poverty programs you purport to champion?

Mr. Sfera: No.

Mr. Mattera: No? Don’t you want governments to be generous with other people’s money and not yours?

Mr. Sfera: I don’t have control of that.

Mr. Mattera: But you moved your shop from Ireland to Holland… to get a better –

Mr. Sfera: I didn’t.

Mr. Mattera: You didn’t? Your company did it.

Mr. Sfera: I didn’t do it…. I don’t have control over that….

Mr. Mattera: How do you not have control over that? It’s your company.

Mr. Sfera: It’s not my company.

Mr. Mattera: You’re not in charge of your own company?

Mr. Sfera: It’s not my company.

Mr. Mattera: You have no say in what U2 does?

Mr. Sfera: Not particularly.

Mr. Mattera: You don’t? You don’t have a say in what U2 does?

Mr. Sfera: No.

After an editor’s note was posted on Glenn Beck’s Web site, The Blaze, explaining that “The original Breitbart.com story has been removed, and the Jason Mattera videos have now been moved to ‘private’ on YouTube,” Mr. Wemple managed to ask both Mr. Mattera and Mr. Sfera about their conversation.

A screenshot from Google’s cache of Breitbart.com’s promotion of the interview. The video was later removed.

Even though Mr. Sfera insisted, “I wasn’t pretending to be Bono,” as he stood outside an event Bono that was scheduled to attend in Los Angeles last month, Mr. Mattera told Mr. Wemple, The Post’s blogger: “I got punked. I thought I got Bono. I didn’t. I got his impersonator apparently. Hats off to him. He got me — and how!”

He added, in reference to a similar video he made recently, “I’m now left to ponder: was that really Vice President Joe Biden I talked to?”

Mr. Mattera also tried to laugh off the mistake on Twitter and in an appearance on Sean Hannity’s radio show, a day after he had boasted on the same program that he had managed to secure his Bono interview though “basic shoe-leather journalism.”

Mr. Hannity, who apparently failed to ask himself why Bono no longer spoke with an Irish accent, could have been spared some embarrassment if he had been a more loyal viewer of the Fox News affiliate in Boston, which reported in 2007 on an appearance by Mr. Sfera in Swampscott, Mass., where he had been hired to perform at a bat mitzvah.