Villages, Fla. — Robert E. Vitarelli, who as director of the CBS Evening News and Sunday morning’s Face the Nation was an unseen yet indispensable influence on television news for decades, died July 30 at a hospice center in the Villages, Fla. He was 86.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son, Chip Vitarelli.

“Vit” — as he was known among colleagues — rose from the mail room in the CBS office in New York to be a defining presence at the network’s Washington bureau from 1963 until his retirement in 1992.

He directed the Evening News with anchormen Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, as well as Face the Nation with moderator George Herman. For periods he also directed programs including the overnight newscast Nightwatch, CBS This Morning and the “Point-Counterpoint” debate segment on 60 Minutes.

He oversaw coverage of presidential inaugurations, the 1961 Mercury flight that made Alan B. Shepard Jr. the first American to enter space, and the funerals of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y, both in 1968.

Vitarelli traveled widely for his work, including to Berlin when President John F. Kennedy visited the divided city months before his death, and to China during President Richard M. Nixon’s historic trip to the Communist nation in 1972. During a Face the Nation visit to Saigon amid the Vietnam War, a bomb exploded at Vitarelli’s hotel shortly before he and his party arrived.

Vitarelli’s most taxing assignment, he said, came during his tenure at CBS Evening News, as the Watergate scandal unfolded, leading to Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

Robert Edward Vitarelli was born in New York City on Nov. 12, 1930. He grew up in Pittsburgh, where his father ran a photography studio.

His honors included a Directors Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award.

Survivors include his wife of 50 years, the former Carol Miller, a son from his second marriage, a brother and two grandchildren.