Waiving team puts player on waivers. All other teams have 72 hours to place a claim. At the end of the 72 hour waiver period, the claim is awarded to the claiming team with the highest waiver priority. If no team places a claim, then the player is considered to have "cleared" waivers.
If the player is claimed, then the waiving team and claiming team have 48 hours to negotiate a trade. If no trade is agreed on in that time frame, the waiving team can either:
(a) pull the player back. This can only be done once per player per waiver period. If the player is waived a second time in the same period the player cannot be pulled back ("irrevocable waivers")
(b) allow the player to go to the claiming team for nothing. In this case the claiming team takes on all remaining contractual obligations, and *must* put the player on their 40-man roster (or 25-man roster if the player is out of options or refuses an optional assignment).
This last requirement is why you don't see too many claims intended just to block a trade. If you place a "blocking" claim and the team just lets you have the player, you potentially lose another player off your roster. It's also why it'd be dumb to put in blocking claims on a bunch of different players - you could get stuck with all of them.
The claiming team cannot rescind their claim, or at least they couldn't when I interned in front offices in the late '90s. My guess is that you're misreading/confusing the waiving team's ability to pull a player back with the claiming team's ability to say "never mind!" It wouldn't make sense for teams to back out of waiver claims - then you really would have every team claiming every player.
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