The prevailing view in Finland has been that the Soviet Union prevented Jakobson from getting the top post.
Now, the Finnish business journal Kauppalehti Presso reports that the United States was behind the manoeuvre: the US Ambassador to the UN, George Bush, did not believe that Jakobson could win the post, and recommended seeking an alternate candidate to prevent the re-election of Burma's U Thant.
Ultimately, Austria's Kurt Waldheim was named to the post. Nevertheless, Jakobson was led to believe that the US was behind him. In the actual vote, Bush voted for him, but did not use the US veto to block Waldheim.
A State Department document quotes Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as telling a visiting Finnish official on November 3, 1971, that the US was "supporting Jakobson and would use [its] best influence to get him elected." However the next day Kissinger told his assistant that he had "no interest" in Jakobson.