After a few days of rebuttal, Republicans thought they had knocked the story down. But then came Obama, in the Super Bowl interview, when Couric said Abdulmutallab "was giving information to the FBI, then his rights were read to him and he clammed up."
"Well, that's actually not what happened," Obama said. "What happened was, he clammed up, and after we had obtained actionable intelligence from him, that's when the FBI folks on the ground then read him his Miranda rights."
No matter what the president says, Republicans are firm in their insistence that that's not the way it happened.
Just a few hours before Obama's Super Bowl interview, some top GOP lawmakers were astonished to hear White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan, appearing on "Meet the Press," claim that they had known about -- and had not objected to -- the administration's decision to read Abdulmutallab his rights.
Brennan said he called four top GOP lawmakers -- Sens. Mitch McConnell and Kit Bond and Reps. John Boehner and Peter Hoekstra -- on Christmas night, just hours after Abdulmutallab tried to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253. Brennan said he told the Republicans that the FBI had a suspect in custody; from that, Brennan claimed, the lawmakers should have inferred that Abdulmutallab would be read his Miranda rights.
"None of those individuals raised any concerns with me at that point," Brennan said. "They didn't say, 'Is he going into military custody? Is he going to be Mirandized?'"
Within hours of Brennan's TV appearance, all four GOP lawmakers took issue with Brennan's story. "Brennan never told me of any plans to Mirandize the Christmas Day bomber," said Bond. "It never came up," said Hoekstra. Spokesman for McConnell and Boehner denied it, too.
GOP lawmakers don't expect to hear that charge again. And they believe that, in the big picture, while administration officials continue to push back, Obama himself appears to be giving ground. To Republicans, that's progress.
"They're going to review this policy, whether they acknowledge it or not," says another well-placed GOP source. "And it only happened because of the concerns that we raised."