Kamel rose through the army ranks to become Iraq's minister of military industries. He married one of Saddam Hussein's daughters, Rana, and lived in Iraq until 1995. For unknown reasons, Kamel and Rana defected along with another minister, Saddam Kamel al-Majid, and his wife Raghad (another of Saddam Hussein's daughters). Jordan granted them asylum, and there they began to cooperate met the UNSCOM and its director Rolf Ekeus.

Kamel provided the inspection teams with a wealth of information, some of it quite humiliating to the teams (such as how Ekeus's own translator was actually working for the Iraqi government) and some incredibly useful (such as disclosing the fact that Iraq had a biological warfare program before the Gulf War, in addition to providing locations for facilities and huge amounts of documents). One of the less known pieces of information that Kamel provided is the fact that Iraq had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction and related programs after the end of the first Gulf War, a fact later verified during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

In 1996, after intermediaries for Saddam Hussein had assured them that all would be forgiven, Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel were convinced to return to Iraq with their wives. Reportedly, immediately upon their return, they were ordered to divorce their wives and were executed as traitors.