From ABC News.
Prime time.
With anchors Diane Sawyer in New York, Sam Donaldson in Washington, and chief correspondent Chris Wallace.
Tonight, rats. They're everywhere.
They're in our homes, they're in our backyards, in our cities.
In broad daylight, in every neighborhood in America, and where you least expect them.
And I peered over the commode and I looked down and he reached up to greet me and he squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak.
Tonight, chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross on rats. Big ones.
If they were a little bigger, you'd have public transportation.
And a strain of rodents called super rats that defy traditional extermination. Is anything being done to stop them?
Do you guys like to have sex?
Yeah!
Tonight, a wake-up call to parents from their kids about sex.
I lost my virginity when I was 14 years old.
My first time was when I was 11 years old.
Video diaries that give a startling insight into teenage sexuality.
Beneath the bravado, there is pain.
I was so crying, and I really wanted to cry.
Sex, truth, and videotape. A story that will change the way you talk to your kids.
Overweight? Discouraged?
I was a chubby baby, chubby little girl, chubby teenager, and then really fat adult.
Tried everything?
That was the no-bread diet. No-bread-potatoes diet.
There was another one where you basically eat meat and drink water.
But wait! More than 2,000 people have found a way.
We found a lot of people who have lost weight and have successfully maintained it for 5, 10, 15 years.
So what's their secret?
Tonight, Dr. Nancy Snyderman on what could be a thinner you.
If you're an unhappy, overweight person and you want to make changes, my God, you can do it.
And what percent of you is fat? And how would you know?
Tonight, Sylvia Chase and the Good Housekeeping Institute tackle a weighty issue
and put home body fat analyzers to the test.
We've seen her face countless times on television, but now a sign of the times.
Paula Jones has had cosmetic surgery, the first look at the new look tonight.
Prime Time will continue after this brief message.
For as long as anybody could remember.
I'm going to get my pictures from Paris.
Dorothy talked about having her picture taken in front of the Eiffel Tower.
Always been my dream to have my picture taken in front of the Eiffel Tower.
And finally she did it. And how was Paris?
The picture of a lifetime.
To cut your head off.
Oh!
Kodak Advantage's cameras have three picture sizes for better pictures.
But it's specially formulated, see, for multiple cat households.
But you know what that means?
No.
More roommates.
New tidy cats, multiple strength for multiple cats.
Victoria's Secret would like to announce that English Lace is back.
English Lace, possibly the world's most beautiful bra, is now available in more colors than ever.
English Lace, only at Victoria's Secret.
We live in a world where people can kill someone and get a book deal out of it because they have the right lawyer.
ABC Presents.
Do you think you can change all that?
I'm a lovely hero.
Maybe not, but I don't have to tolerate it.
This is going to be great.
Let me out!
Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.
What is wrong with you?
Plenty.
Primetime from Washington.
Sam Donaldson.
Good evening and welcome to Primetime.
We begin tonight with a story about a plague that you may not realize is already upon us.
Rats.
Start with a pair, and one year later you could have as many as 2,000 offspring.
The federal government abandoned its urban rat control program in the early 80s, leaving cities to fend for themselves.
And now a warning about what some experts call super rats because traditional extermination methods won't kill them.
As chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross discovered, rats don't care whether we live in a mansion or a cardboard box.
They want what we've got.
A warm summer evening in Boston on the city's fashionable Newberry Street.
A perfect evening for dinner at an outdoor cafe or some window shopping or a little romance.
But not for Dr. Bruce Colvin.
Look at this, we have the dumpsters.
Who, in an alley just behind all the fine restaurants and shops of Newberry Street, is looking for something else this evening.
Every night when the sun goes down, we have a critter that takes over many streets in many cities in America.
Dr. Colvin is one of the country's leading experts on the subject of rats.
In urban blight, he says, the federal government is almost completely ignoring, despite the presence of millions of rats all over the country, even in places like Newberry Street.
They go about that big, some of them? Oh yeah.
We have more of a problem with it than most people realize.
We can't keep sweeping this issue under the rug nationwide, pretending like it doesn't exist.
They're in our homes, they're in our backyards, in our cities.
Outside the million dollar homes of Boston, in the kitchens of apartments where children live in New York City.
Even the best known house in the country has rats, as First Lady Barbara Bush discovered when her rats swam in front of her in the White House pool.
And down the street at the Washington City Hall two years ago, the rat population so exploded that the normally night-feeding rats boldly came out during the day, right in front of the embarrassed mayor, Marion Barry.
God, what a day this is.
And as is true in many major cities, the rats of Washington have spread far beyond the downtown section, using old sewer lines to reach some very expensive homes in some very scary ways, as Tira Williams found out in her own bathroom.
I went to flush the toilet, and then I had this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that this can't be what I think it is.
This couldn't be happening to me.
And then I ran and I got my glasses and I put my glasses on, and I peered over the commode and I looked down and he reached up to greet me and he squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak.
Swimming through a toilet is a fairly easy trick for a rat, as seen in this old documentary footage.
And experts say it happens all the time, as overcrowded rat colonies in inner cities move through the sewers, looking for new territory in places where they are most unwelcome.
I'm sorry if this is offensive to animal rights activists, but if you have a rat about four inches from the most vulnerable part of your body, you'll kill it.
The kind of rat that ended up in Tira Williams' toilet is the Norway rat, the most common in America, an agile, sharp-toothed burrower, now thriving in this country in part because of the widespread use of plastic garbage bags, which the rats can gnaw right through.
They're huge. They get into the garbage and like you walk by and you hear like all these noises and the garbage moves. It's a little, a little creepy.
This is the same rat that spread the plague through Europe in the Middle Ages and still carries many serious diseases, including rat bite fever and another called Leptospirosis, whose symptoms are often misdiagnosed as the flu.
And what's worse, scientists have discovered a kind of super rat, a strain of the Norway rat that can't be killed with what used to be lethal doses of poison.
Those rats that survive that poisoning regime reproduce. Female rat can have eight to ten pups at a time. Two days after giving birth, she can be pregnant again. Every 22 days, she can give birth. Think about those numbers.
Dr. Colvin, a biologist, was brought into Boston nine years ago when there were fears a huge underground highway project would push thousands of rats into business and residential areas.
And they had used this infrastructure that people had built as their homes and their structure and they had colonized it.
Called the Ratman of Boston, Dr. Colvin put together one of the most effective urban rat control programs ever and says he soon came to realize just how little the federal government was doing in the rest of the country.
You'd be amazed at the cities that call me and have absolutely no idea how to implement an urban rat control program. Some of our largest cities in the country call me. How do we even begin? What do we do?
Who would you call? If you called on the federal level, there really is no one who would provide you the technical expertise or the stewardship on how to implement an urban rodent control program.
Not a single person? No.
That hasn't always been the case. The federal government declared a war on rats in the 1960s with a federal rat control program, which over the years spent several hundred million dollars to mobilize a national corps of rat inspectors in dozens of cities.
This is not a home for wayward rats. It's a place where people live.
But the federal rat control program was abolished by the Reagan administration in the early 1980s and it has never been restored.
All that's left now are the old films and these rat control booklets, relics of a time when people in Washington thought tens of millions of rats living in American cities did constitute a public health issue worth doing something about.
The cabinet secretary whose department once handled rat control, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, would not agree to appear in our report.
Her spokesperson said rat control was something for individual cities and not considered by the administration to be a federal priority. A big mistake, according to Dr. Colvin.
When they are not closely monitored and managed at some point, that rat is going to bite you in the butt.
And all too often it is the powerless and the poor who get bit first.
As we found on this one block in New York City, 109th Street, a block full of rats. If they were a little bigger, you'd have public transportation.
A striking example of government failure to protect urban residents from the danger of rats.
They're so aggressive now because they think this is their territory. Sometimes my babies need milk and I have to go out at night and I'm just so afraid they run all over my feet.
And growing up on this block gives every child a story to tell about living with rats.
Some people are moving away from the building because there's a lot of rats. And it passed through my leg and I jumped because I'm scared of the rats.
They run from the basement to the cars, from the cars to the basement. They run back and forth.
Do you think all children in America see rats every day like you do? You think all children in America do?
A sad commentary which parents and community leaders on 109th Street say the city and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani promised to take care of but have yet to do so.
We believe that especially on a block where there are 1,000 school children, that immediate action should have been taken.
Gabe Miller, a volunteer with a community group called Harlem Initiatives, says city officials repeatedly ignored calls for help until his group threatened a public demonstration during last year's election campaign.
Two weeks later they announced this massive, they said there had never been anything like it in New York. A massive campaign to exterminate the rodent population. Nothing happened.
After that big announcement?
Nothing happened here. A few inspections maybe. If anything, the rodent population got worse.
All this in a city where Mayor Giuliani has achieved national prominence for his emphasis on what he calls the quality of life.
New York City is a caring, loving, and terrifically wonderful, warm city.
The mayor would not agree to sit down with us in his office, but at an outdoor news conference he defended his rat initiative, citing a bigger staff and a record low number of rat bites and rat complaints.
But the reality is that if you're asking us has a good, honest effort been made, it would really be unfair to convey that a good, honest effort has not been made because the success is greater than there has been in the last 10 years.
How about 109th Street, sir?
The efforts are uniform throughout the city.
The children of 109th Street, what do you say to them?
It's a shame if there have to be rats in any part of the city.
But the mayor's top aides had promised people on 109th Street that this block would be a model of New York's rat control efforts.
What we found on this model block was that the rats have come up from the street into apartments like this one, all the way to the fourth floor where three children live and where a family of rats had taken up residence as well.
Using infrared cameras and setting out some common food items, we were able to document what the family told us happens in this apartment when the lights go out.
These rats may be living behind the refrigerator. Rats will live in the installation of appliances in the wall of an oven.
We showed our tape to the rat expert, Dr. Colvin.
Their ability to learn is tremendous. When they're successful at locating a food source, they will continue to travel that route night after night.
And I don't know who lived there. There were small children in that apartment.
Children just down the hall.
And see, any situation that has small children and rats of that nature and size is a real concern.
Nature and size is a real concern.
When I ever hear of anything like that, immediately I want to be there and those rats need to be killed and quickly.
In the end, the rats in this apartment were killed, not by Mayor Giuliani's comprehensive rat control initiative, but by an exterminator hired by Primetime Live.
If you were the mayor of New York, would you be embarrassed at this footage we have here?
I think the mayor of any city would be very uncomfortable with these kinds of images, and that's the root of the problem, that it doesn't get talked about and it tends to get addressed through quick fix kinds of approaches rather than saying,
we're going to come up with a long-term battle strategy. We are going to go to war decisively and we're going to win.
The mayor's office says a major effort is now being made to rid some 69 targeted neighborhoods in New York of rats, including 109th Street.
But it's a big job that won't happen overnight, especially with no help from the federal government.
Across the country, America's cities are full of blocks like 109th Street, places officials in Washington have decided are not a federal priority.
What does it say to you if you're seven years old and your school is surrounded by rats or somebody has to kill a rat in the courtyard where you go to school?
Somebody's telling you that not everybody cares about you. We're sending them the wrong message. We're sending them a message that they don't count.
So what can we do to rid ourselves of rats? It's a challenge, but the pros did give us some tips.
If you see rats, seal off any holes that they can travel through. Put food in rat-proof containers. Food is what they're looking for.
Remember, to a rat, garbage is food. Dispose of garbage quickly. And the rat has no reason to hang around.
A frank look at teenagers in sex.
We have the most beautiful, amazing sex life.
You'll be surprised at how early they start and later. Diet, exercise, fat. New research puts some old myths to rest.
Plus, Paula Jones, the new face. When Primetime continues.
The war between the generals is over, but the war for human healing rages on.
Through eight decades, the doctors of the American Medical Women's Association have worked for the health of all.
Now, out of concern for your health, they've granted their acceptance to supplements for the very first time. These, from NatureMade.
NatureMade is proud to bring you the first supplements to earn the acceptance of the AMWA. NatureMade. Trust it by the ones you trust.
At Ace Dollar Days, you can turn a dollar into a lot of great stuff, like two rolls of assorted Ace brand tape.
Or 300 Mr. Coffee 12-cup coffee filters. So hurry to Ace Dollar Days before everything's gone.
Now, on video, the U.S. Marshal who always gets his man is back.
What do you intend to do?
Catch him.
Tommy Lee Jones.
Turn around!
Wesley Snipes.
You're gonna have to shoot me.
From the producers of the fugitive U.S. Marshals.
Rented today on video and DVD.
And they're off. Jumping out front is Sam with his project on Irish castles.
Coming up fast is Marley with hers on iguanas. But from the outside, it's Eduardo with a multimedia Mayan mathematics report.
Now more kids can go to the head of the class because now RadioShack has the new Compact Creative Learning series with software and Internet enhancement specifically for learning.
Only at RadioShack. Compact home computers that can help kids do better in school so they'll do better in life.
This release.
This freedom.
This perfect moment is brought to you every night by the CERTA Perfect Sleeper.
CERTA. We make the world's best mattress.
Right now, for a limited time, get a CERTA Perfect Sleeper at a great price during the CERTA Best Buys event.
Thursday. Be a smart shopper. Use cars, shampoos, the real deal on factory outlets and more.
Don't miss ABC News Summer Thursday.
Step right up to the Monday Night Football Carnival.
This year, Monday Night Football starts an hour earlier.
At 5 Pacific.
5 o'clock. 5.
Monday Night Football starts one hour earlier.
5.
Starts at 5.
5 Pacific.
Now those guys were scary.
Ow! Hold me!
Rookie.
Ted Koppel spends the night in cell block H.
There is a fine line between controlling a prisoner and breaking him.
See for yourself what happened when America got tough on crime.
Nightline in primetime, Thursday at 10, 9 Central.
Most parents and teenagers don't know how to talk to each other about sex. So often they don't.
Tonight, we're going to try to help that dialogue.
We asked 5 teenagers and with the consent of their parents, we asked them to talk to us and to each other about the choices and decisions they go through on sexual issues.
Diane Sawyer has the results.
Sometimes touching, highly revealing look at teenage America.
These are not professional cameramen.
These are not reporters' questions.
Do you guys like to have sex?
Yeah!
And the answers? Not what most parents want to hear.
Where's my bed now? I've had sex in that bed.
Think of this as a letter to you from the experts.
The kids next door. Like Chance in New York, Jamie in Los Angeles, and Jessica in Indiana.
I feel really embarrassed talking about my sex life because I come from a small town.
5 middle class kids, 4 from single parent or divorced homes like Levante and Patrick.
Nobody wants to admit that teens have sex. It's a real touchy subject that nobody wants to talk about. But somebody needs to.
My first time was I was 11 years old and the most recent time was when I was 15.
I lost my virginity when I was 14 years old. My boyfriend at the time convinced me that, hey, we're going to get married anyway so why don't we just have sex now?
Nothing's going to stop the flow. Nothing's going to stop the flow.
Hi, my name is Chance Bassett.
Our first video reporter is Chance Bassett, 16 years old. She's creating a diary with her own camera.
In the past year a lot of my friends have started having sex.
Chance is an excellent student at the New York High School of Performing Arts where she studies acting.
She told us kids don't really go out on dates anymore. They go out in groups and send messages to each other through friends if they're interested.
But when Chance asked her friends about the first time, so many said it wasn't happy.
I was with a guy in a someone's party and he was my boyfriend for 5 months and then we had sex but it didn't really work.
So he left the room and he left me there naked and I was sitting there crying.
Sometimes, let's say I had sex during the day and I went home, I would sit there and want to be a little girl so badly and it would just make me feel so horrible and so dirty.
A study showed 60% of the girls who start before 15 regret it. And the boys?
Our next video reporter, Jamie Williams, says when he was 11 he was seduced by a 12-year-old.
The first time I was a little bit scared but I mean at that time I guess it was something that I had to do.
Okay, what was your first time like?
I just still say I'm a virgin and stuff like that because it was nothing like I thought it would be.
And what did you think it would be?
A little better.
How old are you?
13.
These kids are talking about first experiences at 11, 12, 13, 14.
Pepper Schwartz, sociologist and parenting expert, watched our tapes with Helen Fisher, an anthropologist.
Are these early teens ready for the choices?
One of the things you see in these tapes with girls, for example, is it kind of happens to them.
They don't choose, they don't think about this boy or that boy, it's where they're passed out, which bedroom they happen to be in, who crawls in bed with them.
It was that bad?
Yeah, I was really scared and I got really pressured into doing it.
Was alcohol involved?
Yes.
You get very attached to people that you make love to and then if they leave you, and in teenage, they're bound to leave you because they have their whole lives ahead of them.
So you're heading for an emotional roller coaster.
I'm Lavontay and this is my boyfriend Joshua.
We have the most beautiful, amazing sex life.
It's gorgeous.
This is our next video reporter, 15-year-old Lavontay Edwards from Phoenix, who loves theater and coffee shops and cutting up.
Lavontay's world, Lavontay's world, party time.
Josh is already Lavontay's fourth sex partner.
I lost my virginity when I was 13. Isn't that awful? See, the thing is I don't really feel bad about it.
She says it was beautiful music, or was it?
And then we broke up and it was like...
And I guess I do regret it. I was too young. But I did it. I made a mistake.
Lavontay's mother, Vicki, learned her daughter was no longer a virgin when Lavontay's pediatrician started asking questions.
Did it surprise you?
It hurt me more than it surprised me, because I was in the room during the exam and I knew almost immediately and I just kind of slunk down the wall and said, oh my God.
So it was more hurt than surprise.
What did you say to her?
We just talked about it. I mean, I didn't jump all over. I didn't give her a hard time. It was too late for all of that.
Too late. And while she was taping for us, Lavontay's fourth sex partner, Josh, decided he'd had enough.
It's not even taking me to his surprise.
And why not?
I don't know.
These kids are really out on their own, often in single parent households, with parents feeling like they have no contact, no control, and scared to death of the various diseases out there, some of which are lethal.
And it's not just the big cities.
Teenagers are pretty much the same everywhere.
Jessica Biddle and her friends in tiny Kendallville, Indiana, did wrestle with questions of right and wrong, but ended up at the same place.
I never thought, because it never comes right out and says the premarital sex is wrong in the Bible.
It never comes right out and says it. I'm not even that much of an excuse.
But I never thought that God would give you those feelings so intensely if he was going to punish you real bad for it.
Excuse me, sir. How old were you when you lost your virginity?
Down in Houston, Texas, 17-year-old Patrick Blankenship is working hard at his assignment. Maybe overtime.
All right, Norm, I got to ask you a question, dude. How old were you when you lost your virginity?
While finishing high school, Patrick also works part-time as a bike messenger, plays in a band called Nonstop Bombers.
And he started sex at 13, lured by the 17-year-old sister of a friend.
I'm talking about beds squeaking, lamps knocking over, shorting out circuits and stuff, man, blowing fuses. The whole world went nuts for that time. And it was fun.
Patrick's mother says at least she believes her son is always safe.
I think Pat has been safe about it. We've got condoms in every room of the house.
One night we couldn't find a condom. Once again, let hormones and emotions take control of what my mind should have been thinking about.
His mother says for a parent these days, it's never easy.
I mean, you can't tie your kids up, you know. You can't lock them in a room. You can say, and Patrick and I have talked about it, I mean, what else are you going to do? We'll get more condoms and put it in more drawers.
And what about parental support when it's needed so much?
One-third of 15-year-old girls say their parents have never talked to them about how pregnancy occurs. Half say a parent has not discussed birth control. And young men get even less information than women.
I was going away with my boyfriend and my family. And the night before I left, my mother was like, come downstairs. And I was praying to God she would not say the word sex to me. Because I don't think I've ever heard my mother actually say, like, sex.
If sex wasn't so hush-hush all throughout our lives, through education, through schools, through parents, then maybe we'd understand exactly what it was and teenagers wouldn't run out so fast to experience this thing called sex that we haven't experienced yet.
We're back with Chance in New York, where kids seem to be taking a fast trip into uncharted territory.
Can I ask you a personal question? Sure. So, what age did you become sexually active? What age did you lose the big feet? 1960.
Chance says for a lot of teens, oral sex is an insignificant preliminary. I really don't respect girls that think oral sex isn't a big deal. I think that if you have oral sex with, you might as well have sex with them because it's just as intimate and it's just as physical.
And Patrick captures his friends talking about same-sex experimenting, whether it's just for fashion or for real. I kissed a girl and I guess she's sort of my girlfriend, I'm not sure, but it was pretty cool.
We are looking for the third party girl and she has to pass both of our approvals. Sorry, mom, just faint now.
And in a few times, there are huge challenges for parents. Pepper Schwartz says even with her own daughter, she has to take action to counter the trends.
The question is, do I give her anything else to entertain and think about? Does she have a home life? Does she have a hobby? You know, what you have to do is give kids something that's interesting. Did you see how many of those kids are just hanging out? Well, if you've got nothing else to do with your life, you're going to experiment with sex.
I think the most important thing that one could teach a child is how to say no until you want it.
And there were some girls on our tapes who are saying no, who had remained virgins. We noticed they all used the same words about themselves, that they were special.
For me, I haven't found anybody worth what I have. I feel what a woman has is special and that should be only, it's a gift. That's the most precious gift we have, so why give it up to just me?
And someone else talked that way too.
I am a virgin. A lot of my friends do have sex and I just choose not to.
That's right, that's Chance Bassett. This is her mother, Georgie.
I just want them to feel strong about themselves. I wanted them to make it special. You're a very special person.
And did you say that?
Yes, absolutely.
Cool.
After they finished their tapes, we gathered all our diarists and their mothers together for a talk in New York. The kids told me they thought we were worrying too much about all this.
Some of you, at the current rate, you're going, by the time you're 20, will have had 10, 15?
Not me.
More.
Even Levante, who says the current boyfriend will really be her last.
I tell myself, I am done.
Levante's declaration made us think of another diary moment, one that stayed with us. Patrick, part kid, part adult, full-time teenager, speaking for them all.
What I want is a friend. But isn't that what everybody wants? In reality, isn't that what everybody's looking for, not just me?
We caught up with some of the teens in our story and learned that Jamie Williams, who is 19 now, attends college and has been dating the same woman for over a year.
Levante Edwards is 18, living with a boyfriend, working at a coffee house and plans to study acting.
Jessica Biddle, who is 19, still lives at home and just broke up with her boyfriend. We'll be right back.
If you're fighting the battle of the bulge, stay tuned. New research says that what you believe about losing weight probably isn't true.
And next, the first look at Paula Jones's new face, when Primetime continues.
What are you waiting for? Top Speed Speed Dry Nail Color sets you free in 90 seconds.
Now you can change your nails as fast as you change your mind. Goes on at top speed. All it takes is one coat. Speed sets in 90 seconds flat.
90 seconds? I'm ready. The secret is the revolutionary Speed Dry formula, and only Revlon's got it.
Top Speed Speed Dry Nail Color sets you free in 90 seconds.
Revlon.
It began as the product of meticulous Japanese design, but it was sent to Europe for finishing school.
It was tested on Austria's Alpine roads, refined on Germany's Autobahnz and chased on England's racetracks.
Now the car that's proven itself in Europe is crossing the pond.
Introducing the all-new Infiniti G20. Born in Japan, educated in Europe, now available in America.
Fifty-five. What'll it be? We'll take some rice and...
Get some farf, too. Yeah.
Now you can choose which teams you see every Sunday with DirecTV and NFL Sunday Ticket.
There's up to 13 regular season games a week.
Rice check on the bar. Hey, Brad. Hey, John.
So stock up on all your favorites. NFL Sunday Ticket. It's not on cable. See it on DirecTV.
So what are you looking at? Attention, shoppers. Now get $200 worth of programming when you get DirecTV.
One.
Two.
What is this you bring me, foot soldier? A Hanes cushion-foo sock, my heeves.
Very thick and comfortable, sire. How does it feel?
Hmm. Can we duplicate it?
Many have tried. All have failed.
Very well, then. Go forth and bring back one Hanes sock for each of us.
Why is it always just one?
Come on, come on. Bring him in the heat, baby.
Lucky shot. Oh, I'm so scared.
Really, really scared.
Always pitched in at school fundraisers?
Bok, chicken.
Now do even more. Use your Target Guest Card and we'll donate 1% of what you spend to your favorite school.
Hey, lady, wanna piece me? Come on.
And during August, we'll add a 2% bonus when you buy popular back-to-school items. So support your school.
Now I'm ready. Let her rip.
Fridays, straight from the headlines. Where these children switched at birth, the mother who discovered the heartbreaking story speaks.
What has it been like for you these last few weeks, this nightmare?
What will she do?
Do you have any intention of switching the two children?
My exclusive interview.
2020, Friday.
Years ago, Primetime was the first to bring you a television interview with Paula Jones, who went on to become a very familiar face in the news.
Now that face looks different.
And Primetime brings you the first exclusive look at the new Paula Jones, after cosmetic surgery, as shown to us by the National Enquirer.
Here's Sylvia Chase.
When we first met Paula Jones in 1994, she had a big perm and a story that wouldn't go away, alleging that Bill Clinton had propositioned her when he was governor of Arkansas.
As the case dragged on and the cameras followed, a makeover began.
First the hair, then the clothes, then braces, then the hair again.
Her case was dismissed, the limelight dimmed, but she's center stage today, sporting a new nose.
And here it is.
I had a rhinoplasty done to my nose.
She says it's a family nose, and two cousins have already altered theirs, but there was something else.
If you turn to a cartoon in one of the magazines and you see this, you know, you know how they do, poor, those poor other people that are in the media lately,
you know, they focus on the big part or the ugly part and not the most attractive part, and they make it huge.
A Park Avenue plastic surgeon bobbed her nose in mid-July.
An anonymous donor paid for it, and a week-long stay at an elegant Manhattan hotel.
She has no idea who footed the bill, but she likes the results.
And by the way, she left the shape up to the doctor.
I didn't even know what he was going to do to her.
I just said I wanted a normal nose, you know, to match my face.
And he said, he said, trust me. And I said, okay.
Now, you know, they can see my whole face, the whole, the whole me.
She filed an appeal of her case two weeks ago, so Jones will probably continue to have a high profile.
It's just a little smaller now.
Prime Time Live at ABC News Magazine will continue after this from our ABC stations.
Kathy's body weight, and she felt lost.
I can remember going into large ladies' clothing shops just to be there,
because it felt good and comfortable and familiar.
Thanks a lot.
Kathy changed a lot that was comfortable and familiar.
She quit being a housewife and opened her own business, a hot dog stand.
Just came down to visit.
Good. All right.
And she exercised, often in the mountains, as much as two hours a day.
It's what I always wanted to do when I was fat, and I couldn't do it because I was unable to do it.
I discovered that I had a hidden athlete inside me that I didn't know I had.
And as I lost weight, the athlete appeared.
At the University of Colorado Medical Center,
they found some of the old myths about fat just don't hold up.
So her total body fat is 33.8 percent.
Myth number one, it's genetic.
If you come from an obese family, you're doomed to obesity.
Not true, says Dr. Hill.
I would point out that in the U.S. in the last two decades,
the prevalence of obesity has really increased, skyrocketed,
and the genes haven't changed over that period of time.
Another myth, if you're heavy as a child,
you'll be obese as an adult because you have more fat cells.
Over 60 percent of the people in the National Weight Control Registry
report that they were overweight as children.
It doesn't mean that long-term success in weight management is impossible.
Neil Grigg was that fat child.
When I was 12 years old and I was in the little league baseball,
I can remember very clearly then that I weighed 200 pounds.
It was 1951, and his mother found this, the Fat Boys book,
filled with chestnuts like...
By dieting in the following ways, you'll shrink your stomach in seven days.
No wonder Grigg gained and crash-dieted until he was 35
when he came up with his own method, engineering professor that he is.
One alpha factor, that is the number of calories per pound you would burn.
Grigg tracks his weight like a scientist.
He has charts of his weight gains and losses every day for the past 30 years.
And every day, at every meal, he writes down how many calories he's consumed.
It may sound crazy, but it works.
I found as a result of all of my studies that my daily calorie needs are about 2150 calories.
To lose weight, I just cut 300 calories a day.
One bagel, a big one, is 300 calories.
Two scoops of ice cream, 300 calories.
And that's hardly any sacrifice at all.
Grigg says it will work for anyone if they keep records like he does.
The 150-pound man who had about 20 pounds to lose,
ideally could lose that 20 pounds in a period of about six months
by cutting 200 calories per day permanently out of his diet.
Food diaries, low-fat diets, pills, weight watchers.
The successful dieters in the weight loss registry lost weight all sorts of ways,
but they all kept it off the same way.
They're eating low-fat.
They're engaging in high levels of physical activity, and they're watching what they eat.
The boring stuff that turns people off.
Is there a trigger that suddenly they wake up one day and go, I have to take care of this?
Men, for example, are much more likely to say it was a medical trigger.
For women, it tends to be more social and emotional triggers.
For Deborah Mazda, it was a little of both.
My obesity, make no mistakes about it, was an emotional issue, period.
Food became my comfort, became my lover, became my friend, became everything to me.
Today's discussion, here's my question for you all.
Why are we so angry at fat women?
It still makes her angry.
Every Tuesday, she hosts a radio show on Philadelphia's WNWR.
We're angry at fat women in this country because we're afraid of becoming just like them.
She knows because she remembers what it was like.
Somewhere in my early 20s, I began to have chest pains.
I couldn't breathe. I was in house dresses all the time.
I had enough. I didn't make big changes.
So instead of eating a whole rack of ribs for breakfast, I ate half of a rack.
My first aerobic class, I was 300 pounds.
Good. Again, in. Take some positive energy in.
And exhale.
Deborah lost 130 pounds, and like a lot of people we talked to,
she found a mission to help others feeling trapped by their weight.
She teaches spinning at Penn Sport Athletic Club in Philadelphia.
If you're an unhappy, overweight person and you want to make changes, my God, you can do it. I did it.
So just try to lay as still as you can, just like that. All right.
At the CU Medical Center, they test metabolic rates, how many calories we burn.
In this 24-hour room, what they found varies the last myth that when you lose weight,
your metabolism drops so low you won't keep it off.
The person who was previously obese, who comes down to 110,
would have the same metabolic rate as the person who's always been 110.
That brings us to the one thing that separates the big weight losers from those who just couldn't keep it off.
It'll surprise you.
Three, two, one.
60 to 90 minutes of exercise a day. That's the secret.
How do you put that in your life and have a life?
It doesn't have to be an hour and a half together,
but the other thing they've done is they've prioritized physical activity.
Come on.
It's true.
Deborah Mazda works out like a maniac, to and from classes at the University of Northern Colorado.
And Kathy Upchurch is a regular mountaineer.
They all lost weight, but they gained something else.
A few years ago, the only way I could have been in a place like this is if I had been airlifted into it.
It was really a great feeling to know that me, myself, had got there under my own power.
Another benefit of exercise the doctors point out is that it builds muscle.
And muscle, just resting, burns more calories than fatty tissue.
Now that you know some weight loss secrets, do you know how much you have to lose?
We'll give you the skinny on home body fat analyzers when Prime Time continues.
At times it seems Americans will do anything to diet, try any product to regulate their weight.
But the doctors say it is not weight alone that matters, that it's your percentage of body fat.
Little wonder that there's a thriving market for home body fat analyzers.
How well do they work?
We asked Sylvia Chase and the researchers of the Good Housekeeping Institute to weigh in with the report.
Most people know what their ideal weight range is, but even people who look in shape may be carrying too much of that weight in fatty tissue.
Women over 35 should carry no more than 29% body fat.
Men no more than 23%.
For those under 35, 25% is the upper limit for women, 18% for men.
Self-monitoring of body fat is now possible, with devices costing from about $80 to $125.
Good Housekeeping tested the accuracy of three of the devices, and Prime Time persuaded five volunteers to repeat the process on camera, then share the naked truth about their body fat.
These at-home devices run a mild electrical current through the body.
The faster it travels, the lower the body fat reading.
The TANITA monitor and scale measured Lori Conti way over the limit.
I was very surprised. I was. I always thought that if I could fit into a six, then I was in pretty good shape.
Tanit Williams wears a dress size 7 or 8.
I'm pretty happy with the way I look.
But the TANITA analyzer set her body fat at 33%.
Then the Good Housekeeping technician measured her with two other at-home devices.
The Omron BodyLogic and the BodyLogic Pro.
What a difference. Not 33% at all, but about 24%. Normal for her age.
So what's Tanit's true number?
As Good Housekeeping did with its volunteers, we took Tanit to the weight control clinic at New York's St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital, to the Rolls Royce of body fat analyzers, the DEXA, considered the most accurate of fat measuring devices.
A test like this costs $100 to $150.
The DEXA scans the body, sorting out what's fat and what's not.
In Tanit's case, the results were back up to 33% body fat.
What do you think? I don't know where it's coming from.
When Good Housekeeping put its subjects through the DEXA analysis and three other measuring techniques at the hospital, results were consistent from one hospital test to the next.
Whereas the magazine concluded results with home testing devices were 10 to 28% off.
Though Omron claims their products are relatively accurate.
Dr. Stephen Hymesfield, an obesity researcher, believes it's difficult for people to be consistent with home products.
It has to be done with adequate fluid intake and hydration and room temperature has to be reasonably stable.
You can't do it in a very cold room or a very warm room and expect accurate results.
Good Housekeeping concluded that this fat test, the skin fold, measured with calipers was the best buy.
Just $25 here at the Sports Center at Chelsea Piers.
It's low tech and Good Housekeeping finds it reliable and consistent when performed by a trained professional.
Primetime's professional tests showed differences.
The skin fold measured Doug Palmer at just 5%.
But the respected DEXA machine said 15.9%.
Tenet measured only 24% with skin folds compared to the gold standard DEXA reading of 33%.
Also of note, the at home TANITA monitor gave measurements almost identical to the DEXA.
But Lori just couldn't seem to get a break measuring high on all devices, even on the skin fold, 29%.
It was a humbling experience, it was.
And there was a shot of my flab with the calipers and they were like, oh yeah, let's get a close up of that.
And there's all my flab with the calipers and the reading and I'm like, oh, that's great.
One more note from Good Housekeeping.
It's not necessary to monitor at home every day because unlike the tempo at the exercise class, body fat content changes at a glacial pace.
We'll be right back.