By 1975 Jacobson had served under four Ambassadors and according to Frank Snepp he had become a loyal supporter of Ambassador Graham Martin in order to secure his tenure at the embassy. Jacobson apparently shared Martin's over-optimism about the survival of South Vietnam in the face of the North's 1975 spring offensive, claiming in mid-April that a negotiated settlement was imminent. On 17 April Martin appointed Jacobson as the embassy's evacuation coordinator. He was one of the last embassy staffers to be evacuated from Saigon during Operation Frequent Wind, leaving on the same helicopter as Martin on the morning of 30 April. Snepp asserts that Jacobson failed to arrange the evacuation of approximately 900 of his 1,100 at-risk Vietnamese field operations staff.