By comparing the C 1s photoemission intensities from a clean diamond (111) surface to those obtained from a fluorine-covered surface, we conclude that a single (111) layer of atoms participates in the diamond 2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1 surface reconstruction. The data interpretation presented does not rely on assuming an electron mean free path, but, in fact provides an independent measurement of its value. For clean diamond (111) a surface core-level peak is observed at 0.80\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.05 eV lower binding energy than the bulk-C 1s peak at 285.0 eV below ${E}_{F}$. After fluorine exposure a single chemically shifted carbon peak is observed at 1.85\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.05 eV higher binding energy than the bulk peak, indicating the presence of CF units at the surface.