tonight on "nightline" the favre girl. the sideline reporter and the superstar quarterback. the phone calls, the explicit texts. for the first time, what jenn sterger says really happened between her and brett favre. >> because of how i look people would say i asked for it. plus, chunky monkeys. is he the answer to america's obesity epidemic? tonight, our cameras are inside the controversial lab where pudgy primates gorge on scientific junk food. unraveling the mysteries of human weight loss. and, duct tape rebellion. an extraordinary journey behind the front lines in libya, where terry moran finds america's

allies relying on weapons made from doorbells. $600 million later this is the real story of america's newest war. >> announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with cynthia mcfadden and bill weir in new york city and terry moran in libya, this is "nightline," april 12th, 2011. >> good evening. i'm cynthia mcfadden. we begin tonight with a scandal that shook the world of professional sports and cast a shadow over one woman's life she says she's still trying to get out from under. jenn sterger is her name, but far better known is the man who she says began to contact her out of the blue one day with calls and increasingly explicit texts. he is football superstar brett favre. she shares her story with george stephanopoulos for the first time. >> reporter: her name may always be linked with one of football's

greats, but jenn sterger says she never wanted to be the favre girl. amazingly, she says she never even met the guy. what happened with brett favre? when is the first time you had any contact with him? >> george, i think the one thing that i want to make clear is that i don't know him. i've never met him. we've never met. there was no relationship. there was no affair. everyone out there has this perception that i'm a homewrecker and a gold digger. i'm none of those things. i've never met brett favre. >> reporter: her long, strange trip through the underbelly of professional sports began with a cowboy halt and a skimpy bikini. catnip for a camera man filming the crowd at a florida state football game. >> 1,500 red blooded americans just decided to apply to florida state. >> reporter: and she parlayed those 15 seconds into a full-pledged modeling career, posing for "playboy" and "maxim." snagging on-camera gigs

following sports. even writing an advice column for "sports illustrated." by 2008, she landed what she called her dream job with the new york jets. >> there were no guidelines, no restrictions. no structure. it was kind of like, here, jenn, here's a microphone. go and entertain these people. >> reporter: and you must have been getting all kinds of attention. i would imagine that you would get asked out by a football player about once a day. >> wasn't that often. >> reporter: there was that one time. >> i was approached one day at the beginning of the preseason games by a man wearing a jets badge, employee badge, who asked me, how would you feel if brett favre asked for your phone number, what would you say? and i just looked at him, my usual smart-ass self, i said, i'd say i like my job an awful lot and i've been told i look remarkably like his wife. have a good day. have a good day. i walked away. that was the end of it. >> reporter: so, you didn't give -- >> no. >> reporter: didn't give the number. >> no. >> reporter: but somehow he did get it.

>> somehow. >> reporter: and that's when she started receiving the now infamous voicemails. >> love to have you come over tonight. send me a text. i'd love to see you tonight. >> reporter: he's the big star. he's it. >> it wasn't flattering, if that's what you're implying. >> reporter: no? >> no. he's married. and more than anything, i feel like it was intimidating. >> reporter: but the messages just kept coming. and they became more graphic. >> i think working for an organization like the jets and the nfl, you expect a certain level of professionalism. and i don't think that sending pictures of certain body parts falls under that kind of professionalism. >> reporter: and when the pictures come, what do you do? >> i realize i'm in a lot of trouble. i realize just how serious it is and that this isn't going to go away. >> reporter: you didn't go to the jets because you just wanted it to go away? >> i just wanted to do my job. i was told not to go to the jets.

i was told i'd lose my job. >> reporter: looking back, you think you should have or no? >> i can't answer that. it's never been my intention to ever play victim in this whole thing. i'm not the right martyr for this cause, you know? look at how i look. people would say i asked for it. i think that's been a lot of the perception that's been out there. is that i asked for it. and it couldn't be further from the truth. >> reporter: by the end of the 2008 season, the messages stopped. but so did jenn's employment with the jets. you think that was related to what happened? >> i have no idea. i don't. >> reporter: what happened with the job? you were working were the jets and then it just went away? >> i had all intentions of coming back. and from what i could tell interacting with people i worked with there, they had all intentions of me coming back. and then they were just like the guy that stopped calling, you know? they just weren't there anymore. so i moved on. >> reporter: but moving on in the age of the internet is not always so easy.

last year, the sports blog deadspin published the graphic text messages and voicemails. though jenn says they did so against her wishes. both she and deadspin say the messages were obtained through a third party and she received no money for them. a lot of people think you got paid for it. >> i have not made a dime off this entire situation. i've lost money. i lost my job. during all of this. >> reporter: after the story broke, the nfl launched an official investigation in which favre reportedly admitted to leaving voicemails, but not the photos. but sterger says all the messages came from the same cell phone number and favre was eventually fined $50,000 by the nfl for not fully cooperating with the investigation. >> i was hoping that when the nfl came out and said that i had done nothing wrong and that i was a good witness that this would all go away, but it hasn't.

there's still this perception of me out there that i somehow asked for this. that i deserved it. it couldn't be further from the truth. >> reporter: as far as you're concerned, this is over. you want nothing more from the nfl -- >> i don't want anything from anyone except to go back to work. >> reporter: you want nothing from brett favre? >> absolutely nothing. >> reporter: nothing? >> it was never my intention -- i don't want anything from him. i have never wanted anything from him. >> reporter: does he owe you an apology? >> i don't really care if he gives me one or not. i don't -- i just want to move on. >> both the new york jets and brett favre's management declined to comment. on "good morning america" tomorrow, george will have more of his conversation with sterger, who will talk about the scandal's effect on her family and the nfl reaction. just ahead, it's no surprise that lab monkeys on a high-fat diet gain serious weight. but what can humans learn from them about losing it?

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>> announcer: "nightline" continues from new york city with cynthia mcfadden. >> the animals you're about to see may hold the answer to curing a thelt problem tied to many of the leading causes of death in the united states. from heart disease to stroke. obesity. obesity's difficult to study because it's really a complex web of choices involving diet, exercise and life style, and that's where our genetic cousins from the animal kingdom come in. here's abbie boudreau.

>> reporter: meet sheba. for the last few years, his rife has been about sitting around and snacking. and he's got the belly to prove it. he lives at the national pry mat research center, where he and others are fattened up for science. so, this is bashful? >> this is bashful here. he's a middle aged obese monkey. >> reporter: sheba, along with bashful, cuddle bug, kasper, good looking and chris farley sit around all day eating junk food, locked in cages, doing nothing. you're trying to make monkey just like the human couch potato? >> correct. we are trying to model that sedentary lifestyle. >> reporter: researchers here, who study the effect of food on the brain, maintain that they've already made key findings. like how diet seems to impact a baby's neurological development. watch this baby monkey, just 16 weeks old, whose pregnant mother was fed a high fat, high calorie

diet. confronted with a strange toy, in this case, mr. potato head, she becomes anxious and runs away. but now watch the baby of a monkey fed a healthy indict, di quickly makes friends with the toy. >> young females from these high fat diet moms show a significant increase in stress and anxiety responses. that's consistent with what has been observed in young girls, but in the human population it's really been attributed to the social environment, the social stigma of being obese. here, we now know that it's really underlying chemical problems that are leading to this increased risk of stress and anxiety behaviors. >> reporter: so, the bad diet from the mom directly affects how the child's behavior is. >> absolutely. and it's programming that brain to also seek those high fat diets and those highly palatable diets later in life, which is

going to make them at a higher risk for obesity and diabetes later on. >> reporter: and scientists here also say they've already found at least one medication that reduces rate and improve you as sugar control. at least in the monkeys. but what goes on in the lab is now the object of an explosive debate. we suited up in protective gear for the first-ever on-camera tour inside. >> there are some pathogens that can be shared. >> reporter: to protect all of us. >> this is the special treat that they get. >> reporter: oh, okay. >> peanut butter, fat, all sorts of fatty goodness. about 300 calories purr cue. >> reporter: like a candy bar. >> exactly. this is a drink to mimic the average american who drinks about one soda a day. >> reporter: some of the monkeys develop obesity related diseases, normally found in humans, like diabetes p and

depent on daily insulin shots to survive. in the course of the study, some of these obese monkeys will die prematurely from heart attacks or cardiovascular seasons, provoking outrage from critics. >> how is this any way mimicking a human condition? humans aren't put in isolation and force fed high calorie diets. this is the kind of thing we consider to be frivolous and unnecessary. >> reporter: kathleen connelly of the human society says she's done research on the same type of monkeys in the past. >> we've seen time and again drugs that are failed and had hugely adverse effects on humans where they relied on monkey studies for the testing of that drug and it gets pulled off the market because of the devastating effects on humans. >> reporter: what is your response to critics who say what you're learning isn't all that significant? >> i would argue they have a really poor understanding about what we do. we have not simply trying to figure out if a high fat diet

makes a monkey fat. we really need to understand why people, two-thirds of our population, are obese. >> reporter: the research here is funded, in large part, by the federal government, and drug companies, looking for the next cutting edge obesity drug. and there's no indication those funds will be cut off. for now, sheba and the other monkeys will keep on snacking and piling on the pounds in the name of human weight loss. this is abbie boudreau for "nightline" in portland, oregon. >> this is already created a tremendous controversy. what do you think? visit the "nightline" facebook page. you know what to do. next up, the united states has spent $600 million so far on the war in libya. so, what kind of ground support does that kind of money buy? make sure you get a shot of that hairpiece.

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there's a new development in the war on libya tonight. rebels have high jacked leader moammar gadhafi's cell phone network, according to "the wall street journal." a step forward for them. but my co-anchor terry moran who is on the ground there, says it's startling how low-tech the rebel effort has been, making do as they make war. >> reporter: behind the rebel lines in libya, along the coast rode, you see the gallantry, even the romance of this revolution. the young men race forward the

fight in their pickups, their flags streaming, their eyes bright with the thrill of battle. but this is such an unequal fight. the forces of moammar gadhafi use long range, heavy artillery to pound the rebels. this is what the rebels have. we met their arms manufacturers, a few grizzlesen thingerers at an abandoned military base who tear up old russian and chinese rockets and guns and weld them onto pickup trucks. they showed off their firing mechanism. so, this is the doorbell -- >> yes. >> reporter: and you attach this, you attach this to the rocket? >> yes. >> reporter: and then you are using the doorbells to fire the rocket sths. >> yes. yes. >> reporter: homemade. it's air maizing. it's an amateur do it yourself revolution here. but the rebels want more. so much more. we drove at night to the

outskirts of benghazi, the capital of free libya, as they call it, to meet the top rebel general. he dreams of heavy weapons. so, you would like attack helicopters, like apache helicopters. >> yes, of course. >> reporter: there's a no-fly zone, though. you're not supposed to fly. "if they bring us apaches, we will coordinate with nato," he says. the general spent 41 years with gadha gadhafi. they went to school together. now, he fights with the rebels, finally sickened of his old comrade. the troops the general leads are high spirited, but undisciplined, untrained and disorganized. we traveled up to the front, through a desert landscape now littered with the debris of battle. it is a fight for survival out here and for something else. and on the rocky beach of the

impossibly blue mediterranean sea here, boys are playing again. and for their parents, there is something new in the bright air of benghazi. freedom, as we saw at a peaceful rally here. a hard-won treasure they know that other libyans still do not have. just a few weeks ago, this scene was unimaginable in libya. and you can feel the joy these people have, just standing in the sunlight, speaking their minds. one of the things they tell us, the people in tripoli are not free to do this. this man brought his daughter along and summed up what this terrible war really means to him and to her. >> this is the first time we taste freedom. it's beautiful. it's really delicious. tasteful, you know? >> reporter: we know, though sometimes we forget. >> our thanks to terry moran tonight from libya. thank you for watching abc news. we hope you'll watch