It appears (to me, at least) that there's an organization with a large number of shares at its disposal passing shares on to another organization that wants to pick up a large number of shares, and they're being careful to carry out these transactions without stimulating too much buying and selling by smaller investors, thereby preventing the price from breaking out of a narrow range (especially on the high end of the range). Prior to the $hitty SEC news, they also did this for a couple of days after most of the early morning transactions had occurred. Shares were being bought and sold at pretty regular intervals and sizes throughout most of the day, resulting in huge volume with almost no price change. Today's pattern is different, but the result seems to be about the same.
Maybe it's just a couple of institutions whose interests are aligned and who've decided to cooperate. Maybe the company bought a bunch of shares on the cheap in the past through a third party, and now they're officially buying those shares on the open market from that third party (which is probably illegal). I'm just speculating -- don't know anything for sure.